


the sunrise lies ahead

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Barricade Day, Barricade Day 2019, Canon Era, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Printer Enjolras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 23:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19095043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Five ways Enjolras could have spent the night before General Lamarque's funeral, and the one way he did.





	the sunrise lies ahead

**Author's Note:**

> June rolls around and I get ridiculously productive. Lots of things to come over the next few days! No triggers as far as I know, usual drill if you spot anything :D
> 
> Title from the gorgeous song "Blue Horizon" sung by Heidi Blickenstaff.

**I.**

Courfeyrac’s steps slow as they reach the apartment block that Enjolras and Combeferre both live in.

“Well,” he says, after a moment, and then there’s an uncharacteristic pause, a lingering. The night is dark. They had been the last at the Musain, double and triple checking the preparations for tomorrow, going over and over plans and knowing that, realistically, it is futile, that even the most genius plans crumble in the fire and fury and chaos that is revolution. They plan anyway. It’s something to do, to grasp onto, to keep their minds busy. “I suppose I had better…”

“Stay,” Combeferre interrupts. “At least for a little while longer. I doubt Enjolras and I will be going to bed soon.”

The naked relief on Courfeyrac’s face hurts, and Enjolras feels something twist in his gut, turns to get the door. Upstairs, it is cool and dark; Enjolras lights candles and sets them on the desk, fiddles with his already-tidy papers until Combeferre silently tugs him over to the divan to sit down. After a moment, Courfeyrac drapes himself across the two of them.

“It’s queer,” he says. “I don’t recall how I felt the night before 1830. But that wasn’t planned, or at least, I wasn’t in on the planning stages if it was. What were you two doing?”

“Revising for an examination,” Combeferre says.

“Casting bullets with some of Bahorel’s friends,” Enjolras hums, reaches down to smooth his fingers through Courfeyrac’s hair. Courfeyrac makes a noise like a happy cat. “But you’re right. It’s odd, waiting, knowing what is going to happen, stopping yourself from wondering…”

“There’s no point in it,” Combeferre completes the thought, exhaling and resting his head on Enjolras’ shoulder. Enjolras loves this; the quietness of a candlelit apartment, his two best friends pressed close. “No-one can tell the future. We’ve done all we can.”

“Down with the king,” Courfeyrac says, “Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

Enjolras joins in with the rest of the song, quietly, the words familiar, tripping off the end of his tongue. When they’re done, Combeferre says sleepily, “A siren song for the masses, one hopes.”

“Indeed,” Enjolras replies. “We should probably try and sleep. There won’t be much time for it at the barricades.”

“Shall I go?” Courfeyrac opens his eyes.

“Combeferre will be staying down here,” Enjolras says, and Combeferre makes a dozy noise of assent. “You’re welcome to stay, too. We’ll be meeting early in any case.”

“Alright.” Courfeyrac yawns. “Alright. Thank you.”

Eventually, they make it into Enjolras’ bedroom, stripping off jackets and waistcoats and cravats and squishing themselves into a bed made for two at an absolute maximum. Sleep comes easily. He doesn’t let himself think about tomorrow.

 

**II.**

“René, why are you still working? It’s gone midnight.”

The voice jolts Enjolras out of the methodical, soothing click of the type. His fingers fumble, and he drops an “a”; it rolls underneath the printing press looming like a ghostly sentinel over the deserted the workshop. He turns to face his aunt, who stands in the doorway with a lantern, feeling slightly irritated that he has been interrupted.

“It’s got to be done sometime,” he says, “And the shop’s closed tomorrow.”

“And no-one’s expecting those particular seditious pamphlets for at least another week.”

“I still want to get them finished.”

She raises a fair eyebrow, advances into the room. He’s well aware she knows what the plans are for tomorrow, is pleased she decides not to press the issue. He doesn’t want to talk about tomorrow, about the fact he’ll be leading his friends and their followers to a barricade, about the fact that that people are going to die. Those kinds of thoughts come quick and easy, and linger like poison in the back of the mind - it’s best not to have them in the first place. Enjolras knows this from experience.

“Well. I shall sort the type, and you can operate the press. We’ll get them done quicker that way; you should have at least a few hours of rest,” his aunt says, practical down to the bone.

He clasps her shoulder as she passes, and she pauses, resting her hand on top of his for a moment. The lines on her face collect the shadows, her eyes are clear; she smiles, and then lets go and goes over to the type. He takes a deep breath.

“The press isn’t going to ink itself,” she says over her shoulder. “Chop chop.”

“Yes, aunt,” he replies, going over to the press. Tomorrow will come soon, and he will be done with the waiting. It’s only a few more hours.

 

**III.**

In the end, it gets so late that they all decide to stay in the Musain’s backroom that night. The owner rolls his eyes - fondly, he is too fond of them to chuck them out and too fond of their cause to ever report them - and shows Enjolras where he’s left some supplies.

“Does this not remind one of school?” Joly says from his position, half reclined on a box of cartridges and half on Bossuet, who bears his burden with a smile. His hand is on Joly’s hip. “Without the obvious lack of beds and addition of guns.”

“I hate to think of any schoolboys having access to this kind of firepower,” Combeferre replies, polishing his glasses.

“You would. I bet you were a dormitory monitor,” Courfeyrac hops onto the table next to Combeferre.

“How ever did you guess?”

“You are the perfect combination of deeply terrifying and paternally gentle. All of the troublemakers would have quaked in their shoes. Woe betide the bullies or the boys caught in beds other than their own.”

“Well, the latter was never hurting anyone,” Combeferre protests mildly. “It just wasn’t particularly pleasant when you were in a room with twenty other people.”

“I used to point out useful cupboards,” Courfeyrac grins. “We had some great ones in my school.”

“He was very sarcastic,” Enjolras puts in, cutting off Combeferre’s probable withering response, shutting the door and going to sit next to Feuilly who is looking somewhat uncomfortable at all this talk of upper-middle class boarding school antics. “Took the wind quite out of sails of anyone who tried to argue with him.”

“I forget the two of you were at school together,” Courfeyrac muses. “Sometimes I think you must have just sprung fully formed and joined at the hip from the head of Zeus.”

“Athena is certainly an apt comparison,” Feuilly says. “But to change the subject, Enjolras, did you have a moment to read that newspaper article I left out for you…”

And then they’re off, splintering into different conversations - Courfeyrac and Combeferre still discussing boarding school, some of the others discussing girls and games, Bahorel making Marius blush, Jehan lounging upside down across the musty divan in the corner scrawling in his notebook, Enjolras himself listening to Feuilly’s latest news on the rest of the European continent. There is a nice atmosphere, he thinks, a deliberate attempt not to think about tomorrow. They’re as ready as they can be; they might as well take the night off to themselves.

 

**IV.**

When he can’t sleep - which is often, he doesn’t tend to need much of it anyway - he likes to go walking around Paris. There is such little time during the day, what with studies and meetings and somehow keeping up to date with all the news, and he prefers it at night anyway. He has his best thoughts walking, has never bothered to stop and interrogate why.

It’s raining and he walks with purpose through the dripping dark-blue night, ignoring the catcalls of those out drunk and late, giving what he can to those who approach him. He goes over the plans to the rhythm of his footfalls, drives away the thoughts of who might die, of who might be injured. He rarely bothers to give much thought to his own mortality - what will be will be, only his friends and his cousin Aspasie and Combeferre’s parents will truly _miss_ him - but the others, god, the thought of something happening to any one of his friends is enough to send his brain off on a spiral of doubt and terror and guilt…

The guilt is the hardest thing, he thinks. He cannot step out from under it; it is the burden all military leaders have to labour under. Of course, this is street warfare, not anything anyone would class as legitimate military action, not grievable - no, it’s just _those damned schoolboys,_ or _bloody insurgents,_ or _our foolish husbands and sons and brothers, what were they fighting for again?_

To be free, he would say. To live, Combeferre might correct him gently.

People are going to die. He has to confront that head on or what kind of leader is he? He might lose any of them tomorrow. Still, they made their choices. He’s asked, he had to, he couldn’t assume. The only person he hasn’t asked is Grantaire, but then it’s debatable whether Grantaire will show up tomorrow or not. They haven’t spoken of the moment in the Musain two weeks ago, have been avoiding each other’s gaze since. Enjolras wonders whether he should say something, put the issue to bed. He can’t bear to leave things unfinished. He just didn’t realise it could even be something until it was right there in front of him, and he had already told Marius off for getting distracted with romantic melodrama. There was no time. There  _is_ no time. He has a revolution to orchestrate. It would have been what he wanted if things were different, perhaps, when they had time to talk properly, to explore, to…

He shuts the thought down, finds that he’s been standing and staring at his own front door for an embarrassing amount of time. There’s no point thinking of things that will never come to pass. He opens the door, climbs the stairs. There’s a light under his apartment door, and he opens it curiously to find Combeferre sitting in his armchair with a book.

“Hello,” Combeferre says, as though it’s perfectly normal for Enjolras to be returning home in the small hours of the morning. “You’re soaked.”

“Oh.” Enjolras glances down at his coat. “Yes. It appears I am.”

Combeferre’s laugh is quiet, and he gets up, unfolds the blanket from the divan and waits for Enjolras to remove his coat and hat before wrapping the blanket around him tightly. Enjolras leans against Combeferre, rests his head on Combeferre’s shoulder, feels Combeferre’s arms wrap tightly around his shoulders. Combeferre doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. This is enough.

**V.**

“Bet you never thought you’d spend the night before the great revolution like this,” Grantaire says, sleepy, his eyes half-open a crack on the pillow. “You’ll have to make up something ridiculous and inspirational when you’re interviewed by the curious ladies of the political salons.”

Enjolras feels a laugh in his throat, reaches out to tuck a piece of black curly hair behind Grantaire’s ear. Grantaire wriggles closer, slides his leg over Enjolras’, presses a kiss to his shoulder. Enjolras never thought he’d _enjoy_ sharing a bed with another person, never thought he’d have this, never thought he’d get past the feeling that anyone could be interested in him for more than his body, let alone that he’d find this all with Grantaire, but, well. Here they are. Surprisingly.

It had taken time, so much time, inching their way from antagonism to a genuine if snarkily narrated friendship, and then finally, suddenly, into this. Enjolras remembers it with warmth; the Musain on a rainy night, the first press of mouths together, the panic - Grantaire stumbling backwards, apologising, and Enjolras stepping after him, pulling him close and kissing him again…

Six months. Six months of halcyon days. And now, a revolution.

“I can hear you thinking,” Grantaire mumbles against Enjolras’ skin. “Go to sleep, Apollo.”

“I will eventually,” Enjolras whispers back, closing his eyes. “Don’t worry about me.”

 

**+I .**

He spends the night curled up in bed with a pot of the tea Combeferre brought back from his parents’ shop last time he visited home, going through his favourite books one after the other. It’s not so much reading anymore as breathing them in, running his thumbs over the words and his old annotations like scars, black and dented into the paper. These are the authors that started him down this path after his father’s death all that time ago, the books his grandfather pulled down from the shelf and handed to him, said gruffly: “Here boy, these are yours. You’re old enough to read them for yourself.”

Back at school, he’d hidden them in his trunk, spent the weekends reading in the dormitory with Combeferre, who’d commented mildly on the choice of literature and proceeded to lend Enjolras others from his trunk. It had become even more of a comfort in the two years between his and Combeferre’s graduation; the books and the letters they’d send back and forth, discussing concepts and ideas endlessly, reworking them like molten metal into a shape that suited them, like the bullets that will be fired on the morrow. Bullets. Where will they impact? Who will they kill?

Enjolras shuts his copy of Common Sense with a snap, and presses his face into the worn leather cover, breathes in the humid night air. Somewhere on the corner, someone shrieks - with delight or fear, he doesn’t know. Who knows what the sunrise will bring? He doesn't know, but his books haven’t led him wrong yet - there's no reason for them to go wrong now. Everything will turn out the way it has been planned. The people of Paris will rise. He clings to that thought, holds it close against his heart.

It will be alright. There is simply no other option. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (or not) Barricade Day :( :( :( *sobs*. Tumblr with me: @barefoot-pianist (it's literally all reblogged E/R art).


End file.
